1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains in general to multi-phase search and presentation for vertical search websites, and in particular to multi-phase search for travel reservation vertical search websites.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hundreds of travel related websites enable users to make different types of travel reservations, such as hotel, flight, car rental, etc. via the Internet. These travel related websites are one example of a vertical search engine. These vertical search engines query multiple websites, search engines, and other sources for specific travel reservation information as requested by a user. The vertical search engine then returns to the user integrated search results from all of the different sources queried. Vertical search engines are convenient for users because they eliminate the labor of going to multiple websites, performing a search at each website, and comparing results.
Depending on the search, vertical search engines for travel reservations typically take a long time to return search results to a user. This results from the fact that there are both massive datasets that must be queried and there are a very large number of potentially satisfactory search results. In addition, often multiple searches must be performed on multiple different underlying travel systems. These multiple underlying queries are generally performed in parallel and the results are not presented to the client until all of the underlying queries are complete. In an effort to present search results to a client sooner, some vertical search engines present search results as different underlying searches of individual sources are complete. This method of displaying search results can be frustrating to the user because the list of search results is continuously changing.
Another problem with vertical search engines is that because multiple underlying queries are performed, a large number of search results are returned and presented to the user. Even then, the best results may not be displayed in the user interface, but rather available only after the user accesses several other pages of results, changes the sort order of the search results, or filters the results with additional parameters. All of these additional actions delay the user in finding the results of greatest relevance. As a result, vertical search engines for travel reservations are not able to quickly present significant search results to a user.